Greeting, Thanksgiving, and Prayer for Spiritual Strength
Colossians 1:1-14
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy the brother,2To the holy and faithful brothers in Colossae in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.3We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, always praying for you,4because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints,5on account of the hope laid up for you in the heavens, which you heard beforehand in the word of the truth, the gospel6that has come to you, just as it is bearing fruit and growing in all the world, as it has also done among you from the day you heard and came to know the grace of God in truth.7just as you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf,8and who has also told us of your love in the Spirit.9For this reason we also, from the day we heard, have not ceased to pray and to ask on your behalf that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,10to walk worthily of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God,11being strengthened with all power according to the might of his glory, for all perseverance and patience with joy,12giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,13who rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love,14in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.